The bottom line, the human kind

[sovay]

So last night Governor Baker declared a state of emergency for Massachusetts and as of this morning COVID-19 has been officially declared a pandemic by the WHO and in the meantime as far as I can tell our federal government is hoping that keeping their fingers in their ears means they can't be held responsible for the bodies stacked against their door. God damn it, the Depression took out Herbert Hoover and he didn't personally dismantle the banks. He did endorse the so-called "Mexican Repatriation," of course, so this terrible, stupid remix of the twentieth century rolls on.

I have decided it's not irony that my very early doctor's appointment yesterday gave me useful information. My hearing is undamaged; it remains what the ENT described as "supersonic." My environmental allergies are effectively out of control and their management needs to be entirely rethought in collaboration with a competent allergist rather than multiple well-meaning practitioners in different departments. I am not making this post for advice; I have a plan and an appointment and am assuming for the present time that it will continue to be possible for me to see the doctors that I need to. I am just so happy that I saw a specialist about a problem and the answer was not a shrug but some practical steps. Also it was nice out and I managed some grocery shopping and in the evening spatch and I walked into Union Square and watched The Sunshine Boys (1975) when we got back. "Was that joke from our act?"–"Who knows?"

Courtesy of tikkunolamorgtfo: I had never heard of the Ashkenazi custom of the "black wedding," held in times of epidemic—cholera, typhus, influenza. The image of the wedding in the cemetery is a powerful one. I wonder if a little of it filtered into Tevye's dream. Or An-sky.

I feel like my resting mode right now is anger and that is not physically healthy for me. I should do something with a movie.

Comments

[sovay]

I saw a cryptic allusion to black weddings earlier today, which I couldn't look it up at the time, so I'm grateful for your link.

You're welcome! I am fascinated that it has just been hanging out in the cultural memory.

What an opera this would make! But another part of my brain is worried: a thousand people gathered in a graveyard in an epidemic? Does the opera end with a chorus of ghosts?

Of course; they're the ones being asked for help, after all.

Is consummation part of the magic?

I don't think so: the mitzvah is the celebration of the couple by the community. There's a description of the ceremony accompanying Mayer Kirshenblatt's The Black Wedding in the Cemetery, ca. 1892 (1996). "And sure enough, two, three days later, the epidemic subsided."

[nineweaving]

He lived in the hegdesh, a room where the burial society kept the implements for cleaning the dead...

Shiver. And she slept on top of the oven. A marriage of death and life.

I like that the mitzvah is the poor giving to the poorest.

Nine

[reconditarmonia]

Thank you for the link - that's my grandparents' town, so I've seen his art, but I don't think I'd seen (or remembered?) this picture.

[sovay]

Thank you for the link - that's my grandparents' town, so I've seen his art, but I don't think I'd seen (or remembered?) this picture.

You're welcome! (That's neat.)